The Secret Fascination of King Arthur
by Meruryan
Summary: Arthur has something on his mind, and requests something of Merlin. Crack! One-shot


**A/N**

**Just a quick, random attempt at crack. Brought to you by Meruryan's late-night scribbles. Do enjoy.**

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><p><strong>The Secret Fascination of King Arthur<strong>

Merlin burst into Arthur's chambers. Which were, by the way, also called the king's chambers. And Merlin had every right to burst into them without knocking first, thank you very much, even if he wasn't Arthur's manservant anymore. That was because Merlin was now the court warlock. (He had insisted the title to be changed.) In fact, he had been now for about a week. Actually, it said nowhere that this gave him permission to burst into anyone's chambers, but in the other hand, this had never stopped him when he had been just a servant, either.

"Hello, Merlin," Arthur greeted without looking up from his report-thingies, for he knew that only one person was stupid, rude or confident enough to enter the king's chambers in such manner.

"Arthur," Merlin responded if not formally, at least respectfully enough. "You sent for me. What did you need me for? …Is this about my clothes again? Because I told you, I am never going to wear robes, ever. Have you seen those things? Eugh."

"No, Merlin, this has nothing to do with your… refusal to wear the official uniform of a court sorcerer. Sorry, warlock, court warlock," Arthur stated calmly while piling up his papers and turning to look at Merlin for the first time. Merlin gave him a warning glare for the 'sorcerer' slip up. Because, _of course_ Arthur didn't do it on purpose. _Really._

"Yeah, whatever," Merlin said rolling his eyes. "But seriously, I don't see what's so wrong with my normal clothes, I mean, now that I get paid a _reasonable_ amount, my clothes aren't even ragged, (I mean, look at my neckerchief! It looks brand new!) and they're always clean. I really don't get what's so… what?"

It was Arthur's turn to roll his eyes, and as they looked at each other, they could barely keep from bursting into peels of laughter. After they had both regained control of themselves, Arthur gestured Merlin to sit down at the opposite side of his table. Now curious, Merlin obeyed. After he had sat down, facing Arthur, the king in question crossed his arms on the table, leaned forward and stared intensely into Merlin's eyes. Then he said, all serious, "I need you to do some magic."

Instantly, Merlin was suspicious, and slightly disturbed by the sheer strangeness of Arthur's stare.

"Um…" Merlin answered rather intelligently, (on his scale) while subconsciously leaning away from Arthur and his unnerving gaze. "Care to be a bit more accurate? What am I supposed to do with it?"

Getting a bit shifty-eyed, the king answered; "Oh, I don't know, but just _sit where you are_ and do some magic for me, ok?"

Merlin was getting pretty scared of Arthur. That scared, in fact, that his old fears flooded back. He pushed them back down, for it was quite ridiculous to even consider that Uther would've rose from the dead and that he was hiding behind a curtain, ready to bounce at him and accuse him of sorcery at the first sign of magic. This scenario also had the minor flaw that magic was actually perfectly legal in Camelot nowadays. But you know, old habits die hard and all that.

Still, there had to be a reason for Arthur to act so strange. He had seen Merlin do magic often enough, so why the sudden interest? Merlin really saw no way out of it, so, having a bad feeling he was going to regret it later, he asked;

"Why…?"

Arthur pouted a little, but quickly rearranged his face to his intimidating, and false, 'I'm-worth-more-than-you' expression. He then gathered as much of his authority as he could muster around Merlin and boomed;

"Are you defying direct orders from your king?"

Merlin was not impressed.

"Yes."

Arthur huffed, annoyed, and deflated.

"You're not going to do any magic before I give you a valid explanation, are you?"

"…No"

Arthur made a small, whiny sound. He then threw his hands in the air, giving up.

"Fine! Fine, I'll tell you why. But don't you dare tell this to anyone_, or else…"_

"Yeah, yeah, I get it," Merlin said, the threat bouncing right off him. "Now, what is this really about?"

Now the king started to look slightly nervous. "Well, you see, for a while now, since I got used to you using magic every now and then, I've been fascinated by a certain aspect of magic." At Merlin's nod, he continued. "It's the way your eyes turn gold when you use it."

Merlin didn't know what he had been expecting, but it certainly wasn't this. "…What?"

"I don't know why, but it's… interesting. And I've never seen it, not really, only from the corner of my eye or in the middle of a battle. And now that you're the court s- warlock, I thought it wouldn't be out of question to ask you if-"

"No! I am not doing magic just so you can stare at my eyes. This was such a waste of time…" Merlin was already almost at the door.

"Merlin! Come back here! I'll- I'll…"

"Stammer? Forget it, I'm out of here…"

"_Mer_lin!"

But the warlock was already gone.

This incident resulted into Arthur trying, and failing, to get Merlin to do magic in front of him with various ways. After two weeks of stubbornness from both sides, the unavoidable happened and Camelot was yet again placed under threat. And finally, as Merlin used a spell to destroy the offending creature, Arthur got his wish.

And because the knights with them at the time knew both of them well, they simply ignored Arthur when he yelled; "_Yes!_ I saw it! I saw you use magic!" to Merlin after the creature had vanished. They knew that asking just wasn't worth it.


End file.
